Wednesday, January 31, 2007

They're all rattus norvegicus, but there is a world of difference between the two.

Upstairs, they are pets. We call them fancy rats; hooded, masked, Berkshire, with or without "dumbo" ears. They come in white with dark hoods, beige, fawn, silver and brown. We hold them and walk around with them on our shoulders.

Downstairs, they are pests. Their color is agouti brown. It's a hard-knock life, but they are infinitely skilled and resourceful. They tunnel into crawlspaces and push through hardware cloth. Block one hole and they emerge from three more. They are especially fond of ramen noodles.

I have company in my basement. As I type in my office, I hear a critter happily rustling among cartons that should be cleared out. I have considered poisoning it, but I did that in November--with predictably unhappy results. (When you have a cluttered basement, you really don't want a dead rat.) Eventually I will have to call in the Neutocrete guys to seal the crawlspace--probably the only thing that will keep the downstairs critters out.

I broke the plastic hook for my window feeder trying to move it from inside the house. I was able to replace it with the hook from one of the thistle feeders, which hasn't seen any action lately. There is still one thistle feeder up outside the kitchen in case we get little yellow visitors.

I had a dentist appointment on Monday with Dr. Richard Epstein (Sometimes Classical, 2nd, 4th & 5th Wednesdays, 10 a.m.-2 p.m.). His office looks out over a large garden with plenty of feeders, including a window feeder in the room where I was. It was better than television, except maybe 24.

Saturday, January 27, 2007

I'm watching C-SPAN's coverage of the United for Peace & Justice rally in Washington. Most of the speakers are shouting. There was a "9-II [sic] was an inside job" sign behind the podium earlier, but it's not there now. Lt. Ehren Watada's father was attempting to explain why his son is facing prison time.

Right now there's an active duty Navy man ranting about imperialism.

If Leslie Cagan shouts any more she's going to lose her voice. That might not be a bad thing.

It is easy to imagine what would really happen to these people if the Bush Administration were really the Nazis they portray them to be.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Blackbirds are large and in charge again today. I noticed several cowbirds mixed in with the grackles. These hangers-on don't perch on the feeder, but wait for seeds to drop to the ground. The grackles aren't aggressive, but they are visually intimidating with their huge wings and tails. The smaller songbirds have been staying away, except for a few enterprising birds who use the window feeder along the southwest wall.

I put out a suet cake yesterday and the downy woodpeckers were very happy, except they too are intimidated by the grackles. Starlings have started coming aroound, which is a bad thing. They can wipe out an entire suet cake in a day or two.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

There has been a lot of activity this morning as the cold front approaches. Sparrows have dominated the feeder today, with just a flash of blue-gray from one titmouse. The noise level has been higher than usual. I was surprised to see a large flock of grackles in the yard. They swarmed the feeder and circled the yard before moving on.

UPDATE: I just spotted a hawk perched in the back yard. He was over the compost and brush piles, no doubt looking for a nice, juicy rat for lunch.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Yes, I've been watching the American Idol auditions. It's equal parts for the goof and for the hope of seeing a good singer in the rough. There have been some pleasant surprises and good laughs and unfortunate people, but nothing particularly outstanding.

First off, it's very difficult to sing anything unaccompanied and make it sound good outside the tiled cloister of the shower. Try listening to the contestants sing while tapping the beat and humming a bass line. Many of the contestants pick songs that are dependent on the arrangement to make them happen; one person's rendition of Disco Inferno just didn't have the context to make it happen.

Second, I have never been a fan of the currently in vogue style of flogging the hell out of every melodic line with grace note and labrynthine runs. A large number of contestants try to emulate this style, with the results being that everybody sounds the same and the melodies are beaten to an unrecognizable pulp.

Finally, just once, I would like somebody to get up there and sing a jazz standard. Out of the tens of thousands who enter, some contestants must do this, but if they have they never make it past the editors. It would make my night to hear somebody attempt "Night and Day" or "All of Me."

UPDATE: They did it. One of the last contestants sang "Fly Me to the Moon" and moved on to the next round. I didn't care for his singing but it was nice to hear a standard.

I'm not sure what caused the rush on my feeder this morning, but there were lots of visitors. Several white-breasted nuthatches and tufted titmice were at it, battling the woodpeckers. My son's favorite was the cardinal on the ground. He'd never seen a redbird before, and was captivated. When spring comes, I will have to explain that the feathered kind is good, but the bat-wielding kind is bad.

Friday, January 19, 2007

Israel said Friday it had paid $100 million in frozen tax funds to the Palestinians and rescinded a contentious decision for a new West Bank settlement, strengthening the hand of moderate President Mahmoud Abbas ahead of crucial weekend talks in Damascus with his Hamas rivals.

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert's office said the payment, the first such transfer since the militant Islamic Hamas won control of the Palestinian government in March 2006, was made Thursday night.

Olmert told a group of municipal leaders he made the decision after determining six years of rocket attacks by Palestinian militants in Gaza was threatening the "inner balance" of the communities, YNetNews reported.

That should come in handy with $100 million worth of rockets and mortars headed their way.

It was a small-city arena that never hosted a major-league team. In fact, it was never completed. The New Haven Coliseum was to have had an exhibition hall and street-level stores, but ended up as a rectangular seating bowl topped by a bare-bones parking garage.

Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley performed there. Pat Benatar and Van Halen released concert DVDs from there. The Grateful Dead performed there 11 times between 1977 and 1984, and the Dick's Picks Volume 25 contains most of their 5/10/78 concert. My first Dead show was there (17-minute Uncle John's Band), as was my last Yes concert (the 90125 tour) and the second of two Zappa shows I saw in 1984 (the first Apostrophe of the tour and a nice encore including WPLJ and Sharleena).

What's left of the Coliseum--the parking structure and a small stepped hint of the seating bowl--will be imploded tomorrow morning.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

You may have read about Karl Kemp, the Manhattan antiques dealer who is suing four bums homeless people for creating a public nuisance outside his shop. The "social justice" crowd has got ahold of the story, and are proposing a helpful solution:

It seems to me Karl Kemp has too much glass in his display windows. If I were him I'd think about boarding up before instead of after some outraged person put bricks through every one of them!

Google Earth, the zoomable satellite photo program produced by Google, shows the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as not being in Israel, but being entirely as part of the West Bank (Palestinian Territories). In fact, the entirety of East Jerusalem is shown as not being part of Israel.

After September 2000, the Muslim Waqf closed off the Temple Mount entirely to any archeological oversight by the Israel Antiquities Authority. Then, in order to complete new underground mosques at the site, it removed to city garbage dumps some 13,000 tons of rubble from the Temple Mount that included archeological remnants from the First and Second Temple periods.

The intention is to turn the entire 36-acre Temple Mount compound into an exclusively Muslim site by erasing every sign, remnant, and memory of its Jewish past, including the destruction of archeological findings that are proof of this past.

In a country where construction projects may be held up for months out of concern for the preservation of antiquities, the free hand given the Muslim Waqf to destroy Jewish artifacts at Judaism's holiest site is hard to comprehend.

If Google Earth says it's so, it must be so. Say hello to my little friend.

Not only do they have young boys posing as "naked brothers," but they make one dress in a shirt honoring a mass murderer. The network that once brought us Roundhouse and Are You Afraid of the Dark? has become sick indeed.

UPDATE: After checking the math, I realized I am only two degrees away from Jack Bauer. Actor Rafael Sbarge, who played the clueless father who cooperated with the terrorists and got nuked in last night's 24, was also in the same high scool production of A Midsummer Night's Dream mentioned above. If memory serves, he had a cast party at his house, and at some point in the middle of things, somebody came out and announced that the party was over. He was in 8th grade and I think his parents decided they didn't want a bunch of teenagers partying all night in their Upper West Side digs.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

Alice Coltrane, the jazz performer and composer who was inextricably linked with the adventurous musical improvisations of her late husband, legendary saxophonist John Coltrane, has died. She was 69.

Coltrane died Friday at West Hills Hospital and Medical Center in West Hills, according to an announcement from the family's publicist. She had been in frail health for some time and died of respiratory failure.

Though known to many for her contributions to jazz and early New Age music, Coltrane, a convert to Hinduism, was also a significant spiritual leader and founded the Vedantic Center, a spiritual commune now located in Agoura Hills. A guru of growing repute, she also served as the swami of the San Fernando Valley's first Hindu temple, in Chatsworth.

For much of the last nearly 40 years, she was also the keeper of her husband's musical legacy, managing his archive and estate. Her husband, one of the pivotal figures in the history of jazz, died of liver disease July 17, 1967, at the age of 40.

A pianist and organist, Alice Coltrane was noted for her astral compositions and for bringing the harp onto the jazz bandstand. Her last performances came in the fall, when she participated in an abbreviated tour that included stops in New York and San Francisco, playing with her saxophonist son, Ravi.

Saxophonist Michael Brecker dies at age 57

Michael Brecker, a versatile and much-studied jazzsaxophonist who won 11 Grammys over a career that spanned more thanthree decades, died Saturday at age 57.

Brecker died in New York of leukemia, according to his longtime friendand agent, Darryl Pitt.

In recent years, the saxophonist had struggled myelodysplastic syndrome,a cancer in which the bone marrow stops producing enough healthy bloodcells. The disease, known as MDS, often progresses to leukemia.

Becker, who had a home in Hastings-on-Hudson, was born in 1949 inPhiladelphia and had won 11 Grammys for his work as a tenor saxophonist.He was inspired to study the tenor saxophone by the work of jazz legendJohn Coltrane, according to his Web site.

He and his brothers led a successful jazz-rock fusion group called theBrecker Brothers. Throughout his career, he recorded and performed withnumerous jazz and pop music leaders, including Herbie Hancock and JoniMitchell, according to the site.

His technique on the saxophone was widely emulated and taught. Jazzizmagazine once called him "inarguably the most influential tenor stylistof the last 25 years."

After more than two years in the making, Apple CEO Steve Jobs Tuesday announced the company’s intention to enter the mobile handset market, unveiling the new Apple iPhone. The iPhone brings together several features of the iPod, digital camera, smart phones and even portable computing to one device, with a widescreen display and an innovative input method.

I followed the liveblogging of the keybote speech this afternoon with my jaw on the floor. It was my good fortune to be in a room with two other Mac enthusiasts. The device is pricey--$500 $600, but it will change the mobile communications industry by the time it ships in June.

“Every once in a while a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything,” Jobs said.